Guardianship and custody: Everything you need to know

We will address in this article the most common doubts about the custody of children. It is a section on which we know that there are not a few misunderstandings, so we will try to explain in the simplest way possible what this legal concept is and is not.

Parental power and custody and custody

Guardianship and custody tend to be confused with parental authority, so a good way to understand what is the first is to explain what the second.

Let’s see: from the moment we have a child, whether or not we are married, and until he is of legal age, we have a series of rights and obligations with respect to him. For example, we can choose where to study, if we assume the risk or not of undergoing a risky surgical intervention, we are responsible if for example the neighbor’s window breaks a bullet, etc. Parental authority includes, in short, those rights and obligations that our child – as a minor – cannot exercise on his/her own (can not enroll by him/her in an institute, for which our signature is needed; civilly if it harms things or the person, so we will respond, etc).

Parental authority, then, is inherent in the fact of being a father and therefore can only be taken away in very extreme cases and typified by the law. This means that even if we do not have custody, which will be discussed below, we will always retain parental authority. Therefore – and this is important to keep in mind – even though the custody of the children gives it to our ex-partner, as we continue to be the shared parental authority, we must have a voice and vote in those decisions and actions that our children, being minors, cannot undertake on their own.

Guardianship and custody, meanwhile, refers to which parent is the one that will take the longest possible time of the children, who will have them under their roof. Since it is physically impossible for children to be under the roof of both parents at the same time, here we must decide who holds custody and how it is distributed.

There are two types of guardianship and custody:

The custody and single parent: It involves the children spend most of the time with one of the parents. The other will be granted a visiting right, which may be more or less extensive.

The shared guardianship and custody: It implies that the minors will spend approximately the same number of hours with each parent. The most typical way to carry it out is to spend a week with each parent.

Issues arising from the custody

The fact that a judgment granting custody and monoparental or shared custody carries a number of implications that should be known.

Regarding the alimony: The alimony is the one that must be paid by the parent who does not have custody of the person who has it. The reason is that if the custodial parent is going to spend more time with the children than his ex-partner, he should be compensated for the higher expenses he will have. Therefore in the oklahoma child support payment options, if the custody is single-parent, a maintenance pension must always be imposed. On the other hand, in case of opting for shared custody, given that in principle the parents are the same period of time with their children, no food pension is usually applied, and merely each parent assumes the ordinary expenses of their children during the time that are under their custody, paying in half the extraordinary expenses and those derived from education.